Day of the Triffids meets George A Romero

Rating: 6/10 (7 February 2007)

A bunch of activists break into a research center involved in primate testing to liberate all their furry friends in a commando-style operation. Although warned, this way, they also unleash the highly contagious virus called "rage" that the test subjects were infected with and keeps them in a persistently bad mood, aka, makes them attack anything in sight. 28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy) comes out of what must have been a coma in a totally abandoned hospital and sets out to discover what's going on, only to find the world a desolate and very dangerous place.
This movie is a bit of a mixed bag, which does not come as a surprise seeing as it tries to blend an action-oriented 'dawn-of-the-dead-remake'-like with a lot of elements of Wyndham's masterpiece, where analysis of feelings and moral dilemmas are only slightly interspersed with "action". Especially because the latter is best understood by the feeling of impending doom conveyed upon us by slowly building up a futuristic view of the us-against-them struggle. Some scenes though, are very powerful and work extremely well, like when Jim enters the church with all the bodies and a few infected people. Or where he and his companions sleep in the countryside and he dreams about waking up alone, left to insanity by his travel companions. The confrontation with the out of this world reality and all its consequences are the true merits of the film. It's too bad that some of these potentially strong scenes choose instead to flush all atmosphere down the toilet. A perfect example is when they hesitantly drive in a tunnel to leave London the fast way, only to find their path blocked by piles of wrecked cars. Instead of building atmosphere and tension or even smacking us in the face with mangled corpses which should be omnipresent, Herbie goes bananas and we are left with nothing to do but shake our heads in disbelief.
I guess that's what happens when two very different problems that should be handled in movies with very different styles get smacked together in a single film. While Wyndham chooses substance over style and clearly identifies the most important post-apocalyptic problems when waking up in an "friend outnumbered by foe", almost abandoned world, such as solitude, survival of the species and, last but not least, having to choose between helping others or focusing solely on the survival of the fittest, Boyle under-uses or almost completely ignores these powerful elements. Jim killing of a young infected kid with a baseball bat without a doubt in his mind ? I beg to differ. I can understand his hard-ass female companion can take such actions without hesitation since she has been forced to live with these circumstances for 28 days, but Jim just woke up... Maybe the director should not be blamed entirely for this sudden jump to total detachment instead of working towards it. More convincing performances by almost all the leads (except for Brendan Gleeson) would not have hurt. At times, it really felt like these people grew accustomed to extraordinary circumstances or even the loss of a loved one, in the blink of an eye. The lack of profound usage of the more interesting elements is especially clear when one starts asking the obvious questions raised in the first ten minutes. If this virus has an incubation period of about 20 seconds, then why is central London empty ? Where are all the cars, where are all the bodies resulting from traffic chaos alone ? While seeing Trafalgar square and others totally empty is painting a powerful image in itself, it is far from accurate in case of this "rage" catastrophe and a more accurate image would have certainly had an even greater impact. There are other questions to be asked as well. Supposing everyone was inside at the time, why do some people get killed and others just infected ? What's the decisive factor here ? As far as the musical score goes, it's fine in all action-oriented scenes, but is a bit overused in all others. Over-dramatizing can be annoying. Especially when followed closely by more fast-paced, zombie-like action.
But i do not solely intend to trash this film. As stated, some scenes are pretty powerful on its own, and at times where Boyle goes full-out for either style, making you forget the mish-mash feelings from before, the result is quite entertaining. For instance, i highly enjoyed the "day of the dead" homage where we have a military base that fights of the infected people at the perimeter and even a nod to "Bub", the trained zombie in Romero's third outing.
The conclusion therefore is, that although both styles are mostly better executed than any other film in their respective genres, the mixed end result is, ultimately, a bit flat. Do not buy, rent, decide for yourself, but be sure that it is still far better than most post y2k entertainment imitations Hollywood spewed out.